Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC) was a communist party in Czechoslovakia which existed from 16 May 1921 to 28 November 1990. The party seized power in a Soviet-backed coup against Edvard Benes' non-communist government in 1948, and Klement Gottwald (the party's leader since 1929) led Czechoslovkia from 1948 until his 1953 deaths. After the quelling of the 1968 "Prague Spring" reforms, the party was purged of its liberal members and replaced by authoritarian politicians, and the party lost the 1990 election to the Civic Forum. In 1990, the party split into the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia and the Communist Party of Slovakia.